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My challenge with leadership

My challenge is about transforming myself from Agile Team Coach to Coach of whole Organizations. I have been working with and leading teams during Agile transformations. At this point I have become quite frustrated with the leadership models in the last few organizations I’ve worked with and in. As a result, I am starting a journey to find a solution. My frustrations:

Pressure

Managers somehow always provide either too much or too little pressure on accomplishment, resulting in either bored or burned out employees. This pressure should not come from management, but from individuals themselves. Give people a great goal, the means to achieve and help them organize themselves!

Decisions

There is way too much debate about decisions that a team or individual can very easily make themselves. This leads to frustration of creative individuals being overruled by their “betters”. Halted creativity and initiatives will start to fester and kill the atmosphere and productivity.

Leadership

Leadership is assigned by managers to individuals that they decide are their “favorite” sub-leaders. This authoritative method of delegation brings a team to a “Hero” model as described by Belbin, which will mostly not work. It’s not about that one individual, let leadership flow!

Now what?

As mentioned I feel a strong need to bring change on these points surrounding leadership. I am taking my first steps to do something about them by taking time off, no day job for me in December. I’ll use this time for 3 subjects:

Studying up on leadership and alternative leadership models such as Sociocracy and Holacracy.

This site, I will write blog posts at least weekly and will fill the site to become my personal card.

Networking, I’d like to find a cool position where I can apply what I learn starting from Januari.

If you’d care to keep updated on what I am doing, follow me here, on LinkedIn and on Twitter.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

About Martin van Dijken

I love showing organizations, teams and individuals how to become truly effective while having a blast. I value Openness, Creativity, Trust and Ownership. I would love to help you grow your organization to the next level in an evolutionary style.

What I can do for you is coach your organization on Agile implementation and improvement. Also I run workshops to provide true insights with LEGO SERIOUS PLAY.